Penn State AI Week – Featuring AI4 Afrika & HiA – Register Now

Speakers

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  Professor S. Ama Wray Professor of dance and creator of Embodiology®
  

  Professor S. Ama Wray

  Professor of dance and creator of Embodiology®

  Dr. S. Ama Wray is an Professor of dance and the University of California, Irvine. She is a former U.K NESTA Fellow (National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts – similar to the MacArthur Awards)—an improviser, choreographer, director, teacher and scholar. She self-titles as a ‘Performance Architect’, receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Surrey where she developed her theory and practice of Embodiology®, a neo-African approach to contemporary dance improvisation. Her TED talk articulates its distinctions and philosophy http://www.tedxorangecoast.com/videopick/sheron-wray-bodily-steps-to-innovation/ In 2016 an essay on her neo-African approach to dance improvisation is in Black Dance British Routes, edited by Adair and Burt, 2017 published by Routledge. In 2014 two essays on jazz dance were published in the anthology Jazz dance: A History of its Roots and Branches, edited by Guarino and Oliver.

  As a performer in the UK she danced with London Contemporary Dance Theatre and Rambert Dance Company between 1988 and 2001. Wray is widely known for her role as the leading performer and legal custodian of Harmonica Breakdown (1938), choreographed by Jane Dudley. As its custodian she continues to restage the work globally and has completed a motion capture/Labanotation research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities research Council 2014-16. The dance is also the title subject of a documentary about Jane and this work. Her other films are for JazzXchange Special Request, depicting a journey from Nyabinghi drums to Hip Hop, shot on various locations in NY; and Red as Expected, an award winning film by Dennis Morrision with music by Byron Wallen. Re-inspired after her solo role in Wynton Marsalis’ Harvard Lecture Series in 2012 and her residency at The Institute of Advanced Study (in Princeton) she re-launched JazzXchange in the USA and is developing an interdisciplinary festival of jazz and hip hop performance in Orange County. Currently her improvisation practice is extending into clinical research with UCI medical centre, using her dance improvisation methods as a form of therapy for patients who suffer from chronic diseases. And in 2015 UK’s National Resource Centre for Dance invited her to place her archive within their permanent collection. In the realm of theatre she has successfully directed two of Mojisola Adebayo’s plays directed Moj of the Antarctic – An African Odyssey and Muhammad Ali and Me which have toured the UK and South Africa supported by the British Council.

  In London between 1992 and 2004 Wray was artistic director of JazzXchange Music and Dance Company, collaborating with musicians including: Gary Crosby – OBE, Julian Joseph, Wynton Marsalis, Bobby McFerrin and Zoe Rahman. For the UK’s 2012 Cultural Olympiad Festival she was commissioned to choreograph The Brown Bomber, collaborating with Joseph once again, supported by the PRS Foundation. As a result of her 4-year NESTA fellowship, dance of the African diaspora, jazz and improvisation intersect in her concept of digitally enabled improvisation which manifests in the award-winning Texterritory. Texterritory is an interactive performance platform created in collaboration with Fleeta Siegel. Recent productions include Texterritory Congo, Digitally Ever Present and Texterritory USA.

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  Hanétha Vété-Congolo
  

  Hanétha Vété-Congolo

  Hanétha Vété-Congolo is a poet, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Bowdoin College, Maine and President of the Caribbean Philosophical Association. She is affiliated to the Africa Academic Hub, the Africana, the Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx and the Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies Programs of her institution. She is also Chercheure Associée at the Université de Perpignan Via Domitia, France (CRESEM/GRENAL, Langages et identités).

  Her scholarship focuses principally on Caribbean and African thought, philosophy, literature, culture and orality and on discourses by women and about women of the Caribbean and, West and Central Africa. She is author of L’interoralité caribéenne: le mot conté de l’identité (Vers un traité d’esthétique caribéenne) and editor of Le conte d’hier, aujourd’hui : Oralité et modernité (Academia-L’Harmattan, 2014), Léon-Gontran Damas : Une Négritude entière (L’Harmattan, Espaces Littéraires, 2015) and, The Caribbean Oral Tradition (Palgrave MacMillan, 2016).

  Her unpublished collection of poetry Womb of a Woman was Shortlisted for the 2014 Small Axe Literary Competition and, Avoir et Être : Ce que j’Ai, ce que je Suis and, Mon parler de Guinée were respectively published with Le chasseur Abstrait in 2009 and L’Harmattan, coll. Poètes des cinq continents in 2015.

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  Tawanda Chabikwa
  

  Tawanda Chabikwa

  Tawanda Chabikwa is an interdisciplinary artist-scholar who’s work revolves around Black and Africana dance practices, artificial intelligence, Africana conceptual systems, practice-based research methdologies, and creative collaboration. Current research and creative practice investigates choreographic practices of Black African performance artists, AI and machine learning modalities in/for Black lifeworlds, Africana cosmologies and philosophy, decolonial pedagogies, and embodied research methodologies. He holds a B.A. in Human Ecology from the College of the Atlantic, an M.F.A. in Dance from Southern Methodist University, and works with storytelling, performance art, and visual art (most recent exhibition was at the William H. Thomas Gallery in Columbus, Ohio 2017), and creative writing (first novel Baobabs in Heaven published in 2010).

  Tawanda holds a doctorate in Africana Studies from the Department of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University and currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso working in both the Theater & Dance department and the African American Studies program. Tawanda’s interdisciplinary scholarship and multi-modal creative endeavors have led to collaborative encounters, including think-tank initiatives, educational practice, performances installations, visual art exhibitions, and presentations in Zimbabwe, France, Mozambique, many parts of the United States and more.

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  Femi Omere Founder / Managing Director Hosted in Africa
  

  Femi Omere

  Founder / Managing Director Hosted in Africa

  Femi is a Citizen of Nigerian and the United Kingdom (UK), he is the Founder and Managing Director of Hosted in Africa Group Limited, that established the HiA Network in 2021, which provides independent, self hosted, state of the art, virtual networking and collaboration spaces, targeting Global Africans, friends and allies. The HiA Network is actualising uBuntu and demonstrating Afrocentric excellence as a force for global good.

  Femi has recently been appointed as an Independent Monitor in the Tanzanian mining sector, overseeing an Independent Grievance Mechanism and specifically its adherence to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

  Femi was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 1999, he practised in the UK for over a decade as a human rights specialist and remains an Associate Member of Garden Court Chambers London. Femi has been resident within the East African region since 2008 and in addition to providing legal services in the cross over between human rights and corporate commercial matters, he has become a recognised expert legal trainer.

  Over the last few years, Femi has assisted the African Legal Support Facility, Strathmore University, the Law Society of Kenya, the International Senior Lawyers Project, the Uongozi Institute, the Law School of Tanzania, and A4ID, in respect of their capacity building efforts. Between 2017-2020, Femi, as its first Executive Director, played a leading role establishing the ALN Academy and continued to provide the organisation with independent advisory services after his departure.